


Trance

by jmtorres



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Assigned Sex Swap, Episode Related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-09-05
Updated: 2002-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 12:29:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/356802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmtorres/pseuds/jmtorres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Down the rabbit hole. AU off of Tunnel at the End of the Light, with nods to Ouroboros.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trance

When the Andromeda blew up, the shockwave nearly ripped the Maru apart, and Trance, on her way to a rendez-vous with a bulkhead bent on giving her a concussion or worse, heard Beka scream, and saw the electronics around the pilot's chair spark and smoke like pyrotechnics--

_"Harper, you little psycho, did you do what I think you did?"_

_"Hey, it worked, didn't it?"_

It hadn't worked this time. Trance and Beka had had to drop Rosie too soon, two light-minutes from the star, and that far out, Harper's destructive masterpiece had failed to make it nova. 

Trance tried to dodge the bulkhead, but only ended up striking her temple on its edge. She saw darkness, and fell into the tunnel.

She imagined that there would be a crowd of ambassadors from the ship in the tunnel, and she thought she heard one of the Nietzscheans--Genghis Stalin?--demanding to know how the void could be so full and so tactile. Dylan was trying to lead the way out, but of course, there was no way out, and Harper and Rommie were trying to tell him so.

Trance knew it wasn't really so. Death was always experienced alone.

"My Dylan is dead," said Rhade, looking harsh, and cold, and sad. She wondered what he meant, because there had been no matching genetic reincarnation of Dylan on Tarazed.

Trance heard that clearly, though, and realized it wasn't part of her fantasy, but the beginning of the true visions, so she answered him, tried to explain. "I'm sorry," she said to Rhade. "He told everyone to abandon ship, but he wouldn't do it himself. 'A captain goes down with his ship,' he said, and Harper and Rommie, they wouldn't let him stay alone--"

But by this time she was swept into her next vision. There was a boy-child, a toddler, with some dull human shade of skin and dark hair, and odd bulges along his arms. "Hello," Trance said, crouching down next to him. "What's your name?"

The boy looked at her incredulously. "You know _that_ ," he said, before he vanished.

And then there was Harper, except not quite. For one thing, his hair looked too red. Tyr wasn't quite right either; his shoulders were too narrow, and he'd died months ago--but Harper was dead, too, just now, so Trance seeing him in her future was just as inexplicable.

And he still wasn't quite _Harper._ Trance studied him, fascinated, the way both of them were studying her, and couldn't place the difference until Harper commented, in a voice that had his tone and accent but still sounded wrong, "Nice boobs."

"You, too," Trance agreed, completely startled, before they vanished as well.

"Come on," said a tall, slim man with blue spikes for hair. "If we don't hurry up, the Amazons are going to catch us."

Trance took his advice and ran. She ran as fast and far as she could, until her breath burned in her lungs and her hair was beating her back with every step, and then she ran out of the visions and back into her own body.

Trance found a railing and pulled herself up; her head was pounding, but that might wear off if the klaxons would stop screaming. She went up and found Beka still strapped into the pilot's seat, half of her face black and blood down one side of her body.

"Oh, good, you're alive," Beka croaked, as if she'd screamed her lungs out.

"Not for lack of effort on our enemies' part. Why are we still in one piece?" Trance asked.

"Everything's failing. We look dead," Beka replied. Her voice was more of a rasp this time. She swallowed, her head lolling to one side, then went on, "But the slipstream drive just might get us somewhere, if we don't blow up en route. You fly. I can't."

"I got hit in the head--"

"You're standing," Beka snapped in a whisper. "Better than me."

"Okay. Okay," Trance said, carefully unstrapping Beka. Trance helped her up, her arm around Beka's waist supporting most of her weight. Trance helped Beka to the back, and strapped her in a bunk.

"Use your luck," Beka told her.

"I will," Trance promised.

She got into the pilot's chair as fast as she could, fretfully muttering calculations to herself. There was no perfect possible future without somebody putting the Commonwealth together, or some other similarly uniting force, and that was gone now. Would it be terribly wrong of her to try to go back, Trance wondered. 

Beka had practically given her license to. "Use your luck." Beka knew what kind of things happened when Trance's luck was applied to slipstream routes.

Trance engaged the drive, dove in, and at the first fork in the stream, yanked left hard when anyone else would have instinctively picked right.

\---

She felt possibilities explode in her head, which was an indication she'd done something right. But it _hurt,_ and she couldn't see--she couldn't think--and was that noise in her head, or was another alarm going off?

She dropped the ship out of slipstream. They hadn't been in long enough to go far, probably not even out of the system, but--

But, Trance realized when she saw the Andromeda's golden form in the star's orbit, they'd gone far enough.

A universe where the Andromeda hadn't been destroyed. Trance closed her eyes, breathed, and opened them again. It was still there. She scanned the rest of the system--she couldn't tell very much, because most of the sensors had been blown out by either Rosie or the Andromeda's destruction, but it looked like there was a lot of debris. And nobody was shooting at anybody, which had to be good.

"Incoming hail," the Maru's AI reported.

"Play it," Trance said.

"Maru, do you read? This is Dylan. What's your situation?"

"I--oh--" Trance banged the comm panel impatiently, and lights flickered. "Andromeda, can you hear me?"

There was a pause. Dylan, sounding more formal, replied, "This is Captain Dylan Hunt of the Systems Commonwealth starship Andromeda Ascendant. We read you. What's your status?"

"Our status is 'falling apart,'" Trance replied urgently. "Beka's wounded--I don't know how bad, but--bad. I'm okay, I think. But--oh, no--I think this meter says the AP tanks are leaking--"

"Can you pilot into our hangar?" Dylan asked.

"I'm not sure," Trance admitted. "Half the controls are fried."

After a moment's silence, Dylan answered, "We'll deploy bucky cables to pull you in. Just sit tight."

"Okay," Trance said. "Maru out."

She unstrapped herself from the pilot's chair and went back to look in on Beka. Beka's--blind side, Trance said to herself, may as well admit, she lost half her face when the console blew up. Beka's blind side was to her, and Trance reached out, reached past the burns carefully to stroke Beka's hair. 

"Trance?" Beka asked. 

"I'm here," Trance said. "I found us an Andromeda."

"What?" Beka asked weakly.

"I did what you said," Trance said gently. "I used my luck in slipstream, and when we came out, the Andromeda was here."

"Time travel?" Beka said, starting to turn, to look at her. "I didn't--"

"Shh, shh," Trance said, trying to keep Beka from hurting herself more. "It's--we're still in the right time. I think. I just--I pressed. I found a universe where the Andromeda wasn't blown up. That's good, right?"

"But what if--"

The Maru shuddered as the bucky cables latched on, and rocked Beka in her bunk. Beka groaned at the movement. 

"It'll all be okay," Trance said. "I promise."

"Hold you to that..." Beka whispered in reply.

Trance held Beka's hand, pressed her cheek to Beka's knuckles. "It's all gonna be okay," she repeated. "I saw the Andromeda, and I just talked to Dylan, so I know he's not dead, and none of them are dead, you hear? Harper's not dead, and Rommie's not dead, and--and--" She had been about to say, Tyr's not dead either, but that wasn't--that was something she'd seen, in her death-vision, and she didn't know how real it was. "And you're not going to die either," she said to Beka. Her eyes felt hot and wet. She blinked hard, and pressed her face to Beka's hand again. "You're not going to die."

"Never," Beka answered.

The ship jolted again, this time, Trance hoped, from setting down inside the Andromeda's hangar. Beka's grip on her hand tightened--the motion must have hurt her. Trance stayed still until Beka relaxed, then said, "I think we're here now. I'm going to go talk to everybody, okay?"

"Okay," Beka replied.

Trance got up and walked down to the airlock. It opened just as she got there, and the Harper from her vision, the one with red hair, ducked in and ran past her at full tilt, muttering, "You didn't hit anything, did you? Leaky AP tanks... if it's not one thing on this bucket of bolts..."

Dylan came in next, with more dignity, followed by Rommie and an anti-grav stretcher. "Beka's in the back," Trance told Rommie. "She'll need the stretcher, I think." Rommie nodded, maneuvering the stretcher into the Maru.

"And Jim?" Dylan asked, looking around.

"Who's Jim?" Trance asked.

Dylan frowned at her. "Why don't we start with who _you_ are."

"I'm Trance," Trance said, puzzled. "Don't you know me, Dylan? Trance Gemin... oh." She bit her lip. Nice boobs, Harper had said, as if he'd--she'd--never seen them on her before. And _that_ was what had been different. "I think... I might be... Gem?"

Dylan's frown deepened. "You can't be Gem; you're a--"

"Girl?" Trance asked. "Harper is, too, right?"

"Yes," Dylan agreed, warily.

"He's not, where I come from," Trance replied.

"What are you talking about?" Dylan demanded.

"Oh, dear," Trance sighed. "This universe is a lot different than I expected."

**Author's Note:**

> Also on dreamwidth [here ](http://jmtorres.dreamwidth.org/139963.html) and [here](http://jmtorres.dreamwidth.org/149475.html).


End file.
